In the past, poets rarely set topics outside the topic. Many of Su Shi's ci works not only begin with titles, but also use small prefaces, which are hundreds of words long, and are full of literary talent and attractive.
Su Shi's poems expand the expressive force of words. Su Ci has a distinct ideal color. Some works are imaginative and unconstrained, such as when is the bright moon? (Nian Nujiao) Ascending the Mountain and Looking Far (Full of Fang Ting) and Back to Xi are spiritual inheritors of Qu Yuan and Li Bai. He used both historical biography and oral English, and was famous for his elegance, which changed the style of poets in the past. He attaches importance to temperament, but it is not limited to this. Su Shi's ci style presents diversified characteristics. Apart from such flowery words as River Never Returning, other works, such as (Jiang), are full of charm. (Shui Longyin) Singing Huayang, lingering; The laughter of beautiful women stirs the spring worries of the laity on the wall, with a variety of amorous feelings, charming and moving.
Ci is a new metrical poetic style with the spread of Yan music in Sui and Tang Dynasties and the combination of poetry and music.
The combination of poetry and music is obviously dominant in the early stage of music. From the Five Dynasties to Liu Yong, Ci is a colorful subject, with harmony as the focus, elegance as the symbol, and Ci attached to music. To write lyrics, the author must first rely on the rhythm of the song. In Su Shi's period, ci gradually separated from music and became "chanting without songs", especially Su Shi's "taking poetry as ci"
The artistic features of Su Shi's "Poetry as Ci" are mainly manifested in the following aspects:
First, the expansion of words.
Su Shi innovated the style of ci, expanded the content and theme, broke through the old barrier of "Ke Yan", and made ci move from "flower" and "respect" to a broad social life. Su Shi not only wrote traditional themes such as the love between men and women, the hate of parting, and the worry of traveling far away, but also remembered the poet's habit of nostalgia, grief for the world, things of traveling and chanting, mourning for friends and mourning for the dead.
Poetry in the Five Dynasties and the Early Song Dynasty is narrow in subject matter and poor in content. In Su Shi's view, the expressive realm of poetry is the sea, air and unrestrained freedom. In this case, poetry as a descendant of poetry should be like this. So when he is not satisfied, people use "Ke Yan" as a rope to restrict the division of words. Many people think that he should express the theme and content of his poems one by one. It liberates Ci from the narrow barriers of nostalgia, sadness and hatred, leads to a broad social life, opens up an infinitely broad artistic world for the creation of Song Ci, and endows Ci with fresh blood and vitality.
The second is the change of ci style.
Su Shi broke the traditional concept of "poetic rhyme" and swept away the old habits. He wrote his poems with fresh and elegant words, bold and vigorous brushwork and wonderful weather, which made his poems look "full of waves at sea" ("Flowers and Plants Picked Up"), mostly vigorous and frustrated, and formed a style similar to Su Shi's poems, such as "Ganzhou Eight Tones" and "Su Shi used poetry to enter words.
Since the Tang and Five Dynasties, the style of Ci has always been soft, graceful and charming. From Wen to Liu Yong, although many poets' ci works in this period were both elegant and popular, and the content and form of ci were also attached to music, they tended to be graceful and charming on the whole. Su Shi was quite dissatisfied with this. He broke through the rhythm of ci, introduced poetic style into ci, and promoted the pure literary pursuit of ci in content and form.
Third, the style is diversified.
Since the Tang and Five Dynasties, graceful and restrained words have a single style. In Su Shi's view, the style of ci should not be biased towards a graceful and charming corner, but should be as flexible and colorful as poetry. Su Shi was extremely dissatisfied with the glitz and gentleness that pervaded the Ci Garden, and set up a school other than Liu Yong's graceful Ci School, becoming an outstanding pioneer of the bold and unconstrained Ci School in the Song Dynasty. But Su Shi's ci is not the only one that is bold and unrestrained. It presents a variety of styles, such as "Die Lian Hua" (flowers wither, red and green apricots are small), which is about the beauty laughing and stirring the spring sorrow outside the wall, with charming style and dignified and sincere in sincerity and delicacy. Wang Shizhen commented on Flowers and Plants Picking Up: "I'm afraid I can't cross the wasteland, so what do you mean by that sentence being interpreted as a river of no return?"
It is true that creating boldness is an important aspect of Su Shi's ci style, but his intention and achievements are not limited to this. Su Shi's ci style is not simply against graceful school, but to change the situation that graceful school unifies the ci world, make the ci style develop from centralization to diversification, and form the situation that graceful school, bold school, beautiful school, elegant school and broad-minded school coexist.
Fourth, write love with Ci Tao.
He injected the literati's emotional interest into his ci, and combined it with the popular literary form that citizens liked. This opens up the lyrical function of ci, makes ci have literary value independent of harmony, improves its taste and strengthens its vitality. In addition, he also starts from people's emotional needs, and his main purpose is to reflect the emotional interest of the subject. This is different from traditional poetry, which emphasizes social and political utility and sticks to generality.
To sum up, Su Shi advocated the poeticization of Ci, and made a series of innovations in the subject matter, content, style, lyrical function and application of Ci, which came down to one aspect: attaching importance to, developing and upgrading the literary attributes of Ci, making Ci get rid of its subordinate position attached to music and return to poetry. This is bound to involve another aspect: how to treat the musical attributes of words?